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Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Shenoah - Bleeding in the Red CD Review

Upon initially listening to this five song EP, Bleeding in the Red you might not notice it, but Shenoah manage to cover a lot of rock and metal bases. I’m sure instead, when you first listen to this EP, you’ll probably let your ears go lax, focus on whatever thing you’re doing while listening to it, and inadvertently play these guys off as another wannabe radio friendly metal band. Don’t. Actually listen to them and you’ll find a band that could potentially go in any one of bunch of different directions.

Truth be told the first song is pretty basic. It follows your melodic radio rock template, but in the middle of it, to give the listener something a little different and slightly out of left field, the vocals change from singing to spoken word (much in the vein of MewithoutYou). It’s a bit jarring and doesn’t exactly feel like it fits, but at least they’re trying to do something different, unlike most of their peer group.

“Bullets and Numbers” and “Ashes to Ashes”, crazily enough, have an interesting Spineshank tone to them. Not the speedy, uptempo Spineshank that you’ll initially think of mind you, but instead the more slowed down, yet aggressive Spineshank that only showed up on a couple of songs on each of their releases. The songs have both energy and melody, combined in a natural manner, which comes in stark contrast to the majority of the bands in today’s melodic metal scene. Come to think of it, “Ashes to Ashes” would probably tear up on the radio if given the chance since it’s just that damn catchy and well crafted.

“Scent of a Dead Rose” is easily the most aggressive song on this release with its crunchy and punchy guitars and guttural screams. There’s still plenty of melody in the choruses, which is not a bad thing as a straight up, full on scream fest would feel pretty damn out of place on this record.

The final song “Telephone Bruises” has a punky pace, some hardcore inspired gang vocals, more screams, a lot of melodic vocals, and thick yet smooth guitars. This is the most diverse song of the disc and serves as the perfect closer to the EP. Basically it rolls together all of the elements that were on display throughout the first four songs and crams them into four minutes.

I’d be hard pressed to say that Shenoah are going to break the melodic nu-metal genre wide open again, but I’d also be speaking a complete fallacy if I told you that this isn’t one hell of a fun EP to listen to. In fact, it does exactly what an EP is supposed to do—it makes you want to hear more.